Yes, and they don't do that many micro transactions either. Taking Guild Wars 1 for example, successful enough to warrant a sequel and numerous expansions all the while maintaining a good standard of re-balancing and upkeep, creating holiday events and tournaments etc. From what I can remember you could only really buy a few cosmetic items and they didn't produce a very large amount of profit for them over the basic purchase amount.

Yes, and they don't do that many micro transactions either. Taking Guild Wars 1 for example, successful enough to warrant a sequel and numerous expansions all the while maintaining a good standard of re-balancing and upkeep, creating holiday events and tournaments etc. From what I can remember you could only really buy a few cosmetic items and they didn't produce a very large amount of profit for them over the basic purchase amount.

Well judging from how many people I've seen that have them I'd imagine it does make a decent amount of profit overall, but can't be much per person

Originally Posted by draykorinee

Youre in the mmo forums and you find mmos boring, Im heading on over to the twilight forums to add my unecessary and shallow 2 cents.

He kind of lost some credibility when he said that subscription fees being used for extra content was a fallacy, then said "how often do games like Aion, WoW and Rift actually add new features or content that dont come as part of an expansion?". The bolded bit is important as they've added a massive amount of content in the 8 months or so its been out. 4 raids that I can think of (1 a massive 11 boss raid), a wardrobe feature, a dungeon finder, 3 single/duo player dungeons, new types of rifts (pvp rifts and crafting rifts) as well as creating the framework to enable addons. And the next patch adds a new island thats bigger than any of the current zones, with new dungeons, mobs, raids, gear and more. To say "how often do they actually release new content?" in regards to Rift as an argument is kind of silly, regardless of how good you think the actual game is. The list of things added to WoW during patch cycles is actually pretty large too - stuff like the dungeon finder, the upcoming raid finder and transmogging, raids, new questing hubs, new gear - even if it doesnt come as often. But I had a quick read through the old patch notes to see what notable stuff there was, and theres loads of stuff that we take for granted that it was added in a patch. Can you imagine going through all of Vanilla without any battlegrounds, for example? Or even racials (which were added in the first content patch or something)?

The guy does make some good points, and it is perfectly possible to have a decent MMO without a subscription, but it needs to be created within the limitations of not having a subscription. Correct me if I'm wrong but Guild Wars seems based around the idea of "You buy the game and thats your lot till you pay for the next expansion we release" - am I right in thinking that? That you dont essentially get any "free" (quotation marks because lets face it, we pay for patches in other games) updates that include any content/features and you have to pay for those? Because I'm sure Blizzard/Trion could make a sustainable business model charging for patches with no sub. But for Trion particularly, I cant see them coping without the money coming in from subs.

Originally Posted by Eldrad

You know, at some point, Hitler was "just a beta" and people didn't stop him... then he went live.
Just saying.

uhm dont they have to pay taxes for this money? and some part of it also goes to the publisher and the salesmen who are selling the physical copies. so i think in the end they probably get a rough 30-40$ per copy, and this might still be exaggerated :B

---------- Post added 2011-11-07 at 04:40 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Cuchulainn

What baffles me though is how people will complain about how micro-transactions are just as "greedy" as sub fees. People, *sigh* you don't have to buy anything from the shop in order to improve your game-play experience aside from maybe 5 cheap character slots. You only really need 8 character slots anyway. You're given 5 automatically (one for each race), and you're allowed up to 10, but since there's only 8 classes for now, you'll only ever need to buy 3 more.

I totally agree with Wolfy.

its the same with the rmah in diablo 3, nobody is forcing you to use it at all. and the first few items youre putting in are even free with a weekly reset. people just like to call companies greedy without them being able to defend themselves.

I was thinking about the no subscription thing lately, and thought, "hmmm, can the game sales alone pay for all the work ANet has put in GW2, as well as sustain their bank accounts while they develop new content?" With micro-transactions aside for now, I'd like to take some time and draw up some REALLY rough math.

Is that really enough to pay for the years they've spent on the game, as well as pay a large staff the big bucks? I kind of worry about it. Honestly, I would really have to commemorate the ANet team for being so laid back. Taking a pay cut for making a AAA grade MMO in comparison to a company like SoE or Blizzard Entertainment; who pay their employees HUGE bucks because of subscription based MMOs is amazing. The amount of dedication and passion for making video games really shows with these guys.

However, then I got to thinking, "well, these guys don't work 12 hours a day, 8 days a week like other game company employees do. At most they work 10 hours and have weekends off." So does this make it possible that perhaps ANet employees care more about freedom to sit an relax every so often, rather than slave away like a raving Chris Metzen? I know if I had to work VERY LONG hours, then I would be demanding a large pay. It just doesn't seem like the same thing with ANet employees. They always seem more kicked back, and energetic. They kind of remind me of Gork devs from MIT; very bachelor-like.

I certainly hope these guys do get payed for what they're doing, and in support of them, I'll be buying character slots and a couple cosmetics just ot make sure these guys get payed (assuming that's where the money goes, lol). Father Gregori must tend to his flock, but sometimes he needs to be tended to also....PAINTERLY!

Then reduce this number with the milions of dollars they spend on developping the game, Paying everyone etc. Than you'll see the profit they made, and then reduce the taxes also reduce the amount of money the store gets ..so on.

So the profit won't be that much , but they'll most likely start somekind of a gameshop for mounts or something. Or else they won't be able to keep the game profitable

The guy does make some good points, and it is perfectly possible to have a decent MMO without a subscription, but it needs to be created within the limitations of not having a subscription. Correct me if I'm wrong but Guild Wars seems based around the idea of "You buy the game and thats your lot till you pay for the next expansion we release" - am I right in thinking that? That you dont essentially get any "free" (quotation marks because lets face it, we pay for patches in other games) updates that include any content/features and you have to pay for those? Because I'm sure Blizzard/Trion could make a sustainable business model charging for patches with no sub. But for Trion particularly, I cant see them coping without the money coming in from subs.

I didn't play Guild Wars, but from everything I know they had regular, quite good and big content patches, as well as on the fly ballancing and fixing.

uhm dont they have to pay taxes for this money? and some part of it also goes to the publisher and the salesmen who are selling the physical copies. so i think in the end they probably get a rough 30-40$ per copy, and this might still be exaggerated :B

---------- Post added 2011-11-07 at 04:40 PM ----------

its the same with the rmah in diablo 3, nobody is forcing you to use it at all. and the first few items youre putting in are even free with a weekly reset.

Traditionally, hardcopies of games yield a few dollars in profit to the company itself. Remember that in addition to the "Publisher and the salesmen" you have to pay each member of the team that developed the content, any licensing fees associated with the other game assests, advertising costs, royalties to any voice actors guild members, shipping and manufacturing costs, etc.

Guild Wars (the original) maintained some profitability because it was extremely modular, only towns and outposts were actually hosted on a server, the rest could be generated and run by the home users pc (the instances). Thus the upkeep costs were fairly small and the money from box sales allowed them to at least break even.

---------- Post added 2011-11-07 at 03:44 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Muzjhath

I didn't play Guild Wars, but from everything I know they had regular, quite good and big content patches, as well as on the fly ballancing and fixing.

The original Guild Wars was almost entirely expanded via expansion packs, not content patches.

Originally Posted by melodramocracy

Gold and the 'need' for it in-game is easily one of the most overblown mindsets in this community.

Correct me if I'm wrong but Guild Wars seems based around the idea of "You buy the game and thats your lot till you pay for the next expansion we release" - am I right in thinking that? That you dont essentially get any "free" (quotation marks because lets face it, we pay for patches in other games) updates that include any content/features and you have to pay for those?

ArenaNet has stated they will have a "live team" that will constantly be adding new free content.

It's also worth noting the GW2 will not have tiered raids. If you take away raid tiers from Wow patches, you end up with very little new content, an amount that is actually quite easy for a game like GW2 to exceed in it's patches because they don't funnel all development resources into new raids.

What baffles me though is how people will complain about how micro-transactions are just as "greedy" as sub fees. People, *sigh* you don't have to buy anything from the shop in order to improve your game-play experience aside from maybe 5 cheap character slots. You only really need 8 character slots anyway. You're given 5 automatically (one for each race), and you're allowed up to 10, but since there's only 8 classes for now, you'll only ever need to buy 3 more.

I totally agree with Wolfy.

the thing that baffles me the most as that EVERY SINGLE P2P AAA MMO has a Cash Shop, hahahaha. i don't know if it's willful ignorance or what.

Originally Posted by russykh

He kind of lost some credibility when he said that subscription fees being used for extra content was a fallacy, then said "how often do games like Aion, WoW and Rift actually add new features or content that dont come as part of an expansion?".

his credibility is still sound to me even given that line albeit a general statement, it still holds true, especially for WoW.

with Rift you buy the game + pay a monthly fee + pay for cash shop items + will most likely pay for expansions. Rift though does give great value for money spent with their constant updates and this can be seen as a good thing/bad thing; good in that there is content continually streaming in, and bad in that the need for a constant stream of new content my be due to an underlying flaw in game design.

with Aion you buy the game + pay a monthly fee + pay for cash shop items - expansions as they are actually "free". this can also be considered great value for money as you don't have to pay for the box price of an expansion but that can be good/bad as well; good that you get a large expansion of content for "free", or bad because the content may not be equivalent to what a box expansion would give or that they take too long between expansions to make the "free" expansions a good value for money.

with WoW you buy the game + pay a monthly fee + pay for cash shop items + pay for expansions. now with WoW i feel relative to the other two gives you the least value for money. first, content updates are slower than Rift's. second, the updates are not as jam packed as Rift's. thirdly, time between expansions is longer than Aion's (Rift is only ~8 months old). and fourth WoW charges for expansions when Aion does not. a reason i think WoW can afford to do this is because of the loyal playerbase that it has and the lukewarm receptions of recently released games, they do not feel the heat of competition that is of course until recently with SWTOR coming out at the end of this year and GW2 coming out next year.

now if GW2 offers an equivalent amount of polish and content releases but does not charge a monthly fee it will be the best value for money on the market followed by Rift. i don't believe SWTOR will be able to keep up with Rift's pace of releasing content in the P2P category due to it's fully voice over-ed game design.

Originally Posted by Arcadem

Then reduce this number with the milions of dollars they spend on developping the game, Paying everyone etc. Than you'll see the profit they made, and then reduce the taxes also reduce the amount of money the store gets ..so on.

So the profit won't be that much , but they'll most likely start somekind of a gameshop for mounts or something. Or else they won't be able to keep the game profitable

people need to realize that GW1 is not only a working template for ANet to design a business model around for GW2, but is also a body of evidence that not only can a buy to play game offer great and very well supported content, but it can also be very profitable.

He kind of lost some credibility when he said that subscription fees being used for extra content was a fallacy, then said "how often do games like Aion, WoW and Rift actually add new features or content that dont come as part of an expansion?". The bolded bit is important as they've added a massive amount of content in the 8 months or so its been out. 4 raids that I can think of (1 a massive 11 boss raid), a wardrobe feature, a dungeon finder, 3 single/duo player dungeons, new types of rifts (pvp rifts and crafting rifts) as well as creating the framework to enable addons. And the next patch adds a new island thats bigger than any of the current zones, with new dungeons, mobs, raids, gear and more. To say "how often do they actually release new content?" in regards to Rift as an argument is kind of silly, regardless of how good you think the actual game is. The list of things added to WoW during patch cycles is actually pretty large too - stuff like the dungeon finder, the upcoming raid finder and transmogging, raids, new questing hubs, new gear - even if it doesnt come as often. But I had a quick read through the old patch notes to see what notable stuff there was, and theres loads of stuff that we take for granted that it was added in a patch. Can you imagine going through all of Vanilla without any battlegrounds, for example? Or even racials (which were added in the first content patch or something)?

The guy does make some good points, and it is perfectly possible to have a decent MMO without a subscription, but it needs to be created within the limitations of not having a subscription. Correct me if I'm wrong but Guild Wars seems based around the idea of "You buy the game and thats your lot till you pay for the next expansion we release" - am I right in thinking that? That you dont essentially get any "free" (quotation marks because lets face it, we pay for patches in other games) updates that include any content/features and you have to pay for those? Because I'm sure Blizzard/Trion could make a sustainable business model charging for patches with no sub. But for Trion particularly, I cant see them coping without the money coming in from subs.

All the content released after you buy the game is not free. The 60 dollars you payed to buy the game also goes toward that content. This explains why cata was 40 bucks, but shorter. Guild Wars released a free Winds of Change content patch. It's quite big, too.

Subs are just extra money on the side for developers to play with. I believe one of the main reasons why GW2 is able to be F2P is because ANets projects are funded by NCSoft, not by ANet themselves. I'm not so sure if NCSoft pays their salaries though. Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.

I also don't think Urgoz's Warren and The Deep were in at Faction's release either...

Pretty sure those were part of factions release, but DOA was added in content patch after Nightfall, so were whole hard mode switch that effected every zone/mission in game adding a lot of replay value. You could also add War in Kryta, Hearts of the North and Winds of Change (part 1 and 2 so far) to your list, but I think you proved already that Anjerith was just spreading misinformation.

Guild Wars 1 is the answer for you.... it was success and gave enough money for them to do another... they just dont spend their money into crap like blizzard does :P blizzcon itself is awesome but still costs and those statues and whatever hecks they made.

Guild Wars 1 is the answer for you.... it was success and gave enough money for them to do another... they just dont spend their money into crap like blizzard does :P blizzcon itself is awesome but still costs and those statues and whatever hecks they made.

i dont get all the discussion about it... there are other games wich get along well with only the packageprice for the game. This must be good profit cause otherwise noone would develop games anymore. maybe a bad example but Diablo2 has still a great playerbase, the Server for Bnet run since day one and they got along well without subfees.

Subfees are kinda new in the business, most of you seem to forget that the Business got along quit good without fees.

If GW1 was so successfull why shouldnt GW2? It would be a fair trade if Blizzard lowers the fees but then they couldnt efford their golden faucets in their bathroom.

Yeah, I think my OP has been well answered in this thread. I've gained quite a bit of insight by making this thread and I'm glad everyone joined in the discussion. Good sports, the lot of you! With that said, let us go forth and conquer the Asura! Errr...I mean...save Tyria!